I remember looking for something like this a while ago, but I didn't have much luck. I think it may venture too much into "implementation-defined" territory. I look forward to see what other folks recommend, though.
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dappawitMar 4 '11 at 0:29

5 Answers
5

This is platform-specific, and also depends on how you're compiling code. If you compile code with gcc using -fomit-frame-pointer it's very hard to get a useful backtrace, generally requiring heuristics. If you're using any libraries that use that flag you'll also run into problems--it's often used for heavily optimized libraries (eg. nVidia's OpenGL libraries).

This isn't a self-contained solution, as it's part of a larger engine, but the code is helpful:

This includes backtracing with the frame pointer with gcc when available and heuristic backtracing when it isn't; this can tend to give spurious entries in the trace, but for getting a backtrace for a crash report it's much better than losing the trace entirely.

There's other related code in those directories you'd want to look at to make use of that code (symbol lookups, signal handling); those links are a good starting point.

Core dumps can be very useful, but as they can be large they're not always ideal for things like crash reports. (Windows has somewhat more thorough support for this with "minidumps", allowing you to specify what information should be included.)
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Glenn MaynardMar 4 '11 at 0:53